Marie Collins, an Irish woman who was sexually abused by clergy, has quit in frustration her post on a Vatican commission advising Pope Francis about how to fight abuse of minors. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

(Newser)
–
The only remaining sexual abuse survivor on the Vatican's commission dealing with sexual abuse by priests has quit over what she calls "shameful" push back from the Vatican, Reuters reports. Marie Collins says the "last straw" for her was when the Vatican administration ignored a request from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors that it respond to all correspondence from people who've been sexually abused by priests. According to the Guardian, Collins—who was sexually abused by a priest when she was 13—says it's hard to believe the Vatican truly cares about victims when it can't even bother to reply to their letters.

Collins says she does believe Pope Francis wants to help victims, NBC News reports, but she's upset he's been reducing punishments and granting clemency to abusive priests. She says the pope is too quick to show mercy when it comes to priests sexually abusing children. Last summer, Pope Francis canceled a tribunal that was supposed to prosecute bishops who protected abusive priests. Collins also accuses the Vatican of a "lack of cooperation" with the commission that has led to "constant setbacks." "It is devastating in 2017 to see that these men still can put other concerns before the safety of children and vulnerable adults," Reuters quotes her as saying. The only other abuse survivor on the commission left in February 2016.

federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state's entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000. http://www.cbsnews.com/news... comprehensive report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004 as well as several other studies), 4% of Catholic priests in the USA sexually victimized minors during the past half century. No evidence has been published at this time that states that this number is higher than clergy from other religious traditions. The 4% figure appears lower than school teachers during the same time frame and certainly less than offenders in the general population of men.